Dear Diary
by Danielle Anderson
Summary: “Your perplexity wouldn't happen to have anything to do with my diary now, would it?” Raito/L


Title: Dear Diary  
Rating: T  
Pairings: Raito/L  
Word Count: 5083  
Warning: AU, genderswitch  
Disclaimer: Death Note belongs to Ohba and Obata

The kitchen was burnt and Raito coughed, waving his hands to get rid of the smoke, his eyes watering.

L brought out the fire extinguisher and sprayed a load of white stuff that he didn't know the name of because he was too busy trying to get away from the smoke.

"Well," she said when she was done. "I'm never cooking again." She talked like she was talking about the weather – calm and bored, unmoved by the possibility that she could've burnt down their house.

Why was he not astonished that she didn't care? She could buy a new house thrice as big as this and five times more luxurious if they lost this one. For all he knew, this could've been her plan from the start – set the kitchen on fire, burn the house down to the ground, and get a new one.

"Yes," he said through grit teeth, snatching the fire extinguisher away from her. "Just like you always wanted."

She had the decency to look ashamed then, but it didn't last long because she then put her hands in her pockets and walked out, leaving him to clean the mess.

_Why am I not surprised?_

It took him thirty minutes to gather the broken glass pieces, sweep up the dust from the floor and wipe the counter clean. When he came back to the living room, she was waiting for him. He knew he looked like a mess, with his hair damp from sweat and flour on his jacket. It was an expensive shirt and he would make sure that she paid the laundry bills.

Which would be a piece of cake for her, considering that she got her salary in nine figures.

"I think you should give that to me," she held out her hands, and with a frown, he deposited his dusty tie and jacket, hoping that they wouldn't disappear. This was an expensive suit; he'd hate to see it lost because of L's carelessness.

Now, to the shower.

Raccoon Girl was neatly curled up in bed, like folded clothes, when Raito came out of the bathroom, feeling much more relaxed, toweling his hair dry. She was the very image of a little girl who had done something naughty and decided to go to bed to avoid trouble with her mother.

After he was done drying his hair, he got into bed, his back turned towards L, not because of spite, but because he just wanted to get some sleep.

"I was trying to bake a cake again," offered Raccoon Girl.

He rolled his eyes, pulling the covers to his chest. "Why didn't you just order it like you always do?" he asked, irritated.

"I was feeling adventurous this evening," she explained, reminding him of the other time she'd tried to bake a cake, ending in disaster.

"So you decided to use the kitchen as a lab?"

A pause. "Yes...apparently so."

"Hmm." And then he closed his eyes, fully intending to drift off to slumber land. Tonight, he didn't care that L would shortly sneak off to the study once he was fast asleep. Cleaning the kitchen had worn him out even more that the latest (albeit ridiculous) theft investigation and he was not going to make things worse for himself by fighting with L.

He'd almost gone to sleep when her baritone voice shook him from his rest.

_Who disturbs my slumber?_

"So how was your day?" she asked him casually.

He blinked to get the drowsiness out of his eyes. "It was fine," he answered briefly. "How was yours?"

"Uneventful," she replied, "I was bored."

"I figured." He got comfortable against the pillows, wanting to doze off again, hoping that the conversation was over, when she said:

"I've got nothing to keep me occupied."

"I've learned that adventures in the kitchen is a good remedy to that," he quipped drily, feeling the displeased glare from her eyes on the back of his neck. He ignored it.

"Don't you have any cases to solve?" he asked, folding his arms across his chest. "You haven't told me anything about the new projects you're working on."

"That's true. But Raito-kun has hardly been home, an absence sharply felt here." Her voice became softer here, and his eyes opened wide.

"Yeah," he said awkwardly in apology. "I've been busy."

"Are you tired?" she sounded more considerate than usual.

"Not that much," he lied. He supposed that he could stay awake a little more and hear what she had to say. He turned over to face her; she'd propped herself up on one elbow, looking at him intensely, collar falling to the side to expose one pale shoulder.

All right, no, he wasn't feeling energetic enough for that and he had a feeling that she wouldn't take it very kindly if he fell asleep on her.

"What has Raito-kun been working on?" she wanted to know. Ah, so she just wanted to talk. Good.

He heaved a sigh. "It's nothing important. Just a stolen diary."

"What? Something so simple?"

"She's the CEO of an oil company here. She had some sensitive information – a important code – written in her journal. Someone stole it to harass her for a large amount of ransom."

"I can't imagine why anyone would be so stupid to write down something like that where it could easily be seen," she said disapprovingly.

"Well..." Raito thought for a moment. "People write weirder things. We went to court today after we got the diary back. I was going through it to get to that page and I found this really silly entry she'd written about the day she met her husband."

"Ah," L smiled knowingly at this. "That's not surprising, you know. Women often like to write of such things in their journals."

"Yeah," he agreed with a small laugh. "I once saw Sayu write something about Ryuuga Hideki. I teased her for a week." He looked at her wryly. "Do you have a journal?"

"Do you?"

He made a face. "No. You'd know if I did," he added bitterly, because L knew everything about him. Even things he didn't want her to know.

She didn't react. "Well, I'll admit that I have a case journal." She lay back against the pillows, looking up at the ceiling, eyes lost in thought. "To write down observations on whatever I'm working on."

"Okay." He understood that – it was expected. "And no mushy entries?"

Her lips quirked into a smile. "For the most part, no. Because I hardly had the opportunity," she reminded him subtly.

"What about _after_ you had the opportunity?" he asked with a lopsided smile. "Nothing about the matters of the heart?" He laughed, remembering something. "Sayu wrote something like, 'Dear Diary, today I met my soulmate and fell in love at first sight.'"

L grinned at this. "Well," she said cautiously, "I never wrote something so juvenile. But yes, I did that something to that effect, I think..."

His curiosity was peaked. "Really? Like what?"

She took a deep breath and adopted a comical, girlish tone. "'Dear Diary, today I met the man I am going to marry. He is a sociopathic serial killer, although handsome and charming, and I've decided that those qualities are enough in a husband."

They both laughed.

"Don't tell me you actually wrote something like that," he said with a grin.

"Not word for word," she responded cryptically, "but you get the idea."

He stared. "Seriously?"

"Yes."

A pause. "Can I see it?"

"Now, now," she chided gently, turning the tables around. "Raito-kun knows that it's not polite to meddle in people's _private_ affairs."

"But you already _told_ me," he pointed out, somewhat annoyed. "And the entry's _about_ me."

"I can assure him that he isn't missing much by not seeing the entry." She glanced at the clock. "Didn't he say a few minutes ago that he was tried?"

"Yes," he said with strained patience, "but –"

"Good night, Raito-kun," she turned off the bedside lamp and settled under the covers, signaling the end of the conversation, leaving him very unsatisfied.

And Raito didn't get a wink of sleep for the most of that night.

* * *

He was restless the next day. At work, he kept slipping into brief dazes where he'd wonder what L could've written in her diary about him. True, he'd always known, back in school, that many of his female classmates wrote about him in their journals, drawn heart shapes around his name, scribbling _Mr and Mrs Raito Yagami_ (how embarrassing), but he'd never paid any attention to that; it had always seemed silly to get so serious about someone just having one date with them. But L wasn't any ordinary woman. She had more perception and substance and therefore, whatever she had written in her journal must be more substantial that _Dear Diary, Raito Yagami is the best-looking guy in my class. Possibly in this entire school._

"Aizawa-san," he knocked on the older man's door during their coffee break. Aizawa was hunched over his desk, writing something that Raito assumed were corrections in a police report.

"Raito-kun," he glanced up, sounding busy but pleasantly surprised. "Come on in. Sit down."

Raito stepped into the office and sat on the leather couch. He took a sip from his mug of coffee. "How's the report going?"

"Pretty good," said Aizawa. "There's something wrong with my printer, though. I might need to use yours if it doesn't get fixed."

"Sure, feel free," said Raito. He paused, wondering how he should word the thing on his mind. He wasn't in the habit of discussing his problems with anyone but Aizawa gave him a sort of comfort zone where he felt that he could talk about something confidential, and not be afraid of rumors and gossip. After all, next to Chief Yagami, Aizawa was the most sensible one.

"Does...your wife keep a diary?" he asked hesitantly, and wished that he could've posed that question more smoothly. Now he just sounded like a bored housewife, looking for some silly gossip.

The older man looked at him, surprised. "What?" he echoed.

Raito sighed. He'd have to think fast about how to fix up his blunder (where had all the charm of his youth gone? He must have lost it when he married L). "I was talking to L last night about Sizuma Yamazaki's diary, and then she said that she wrote something about me in hers. Now I'm really curious to see it, but she won't show it to me."

Aizawa laughed sardonically, shaking his head. "Why am I not surprised?" he muttered, echoing the younger man's thoughts from last night, more to himself than to Raito as he went back to his papers. "Ryuuzaki's like that. Don't you remember how she once tested our commitment to the Kira investigation?"

Raito nodded, darkly remembering how L kept a secret that she had arranged for pensions for the task force members should any of them die in the line of duty, just to see if Aizawa was willing to chose them over the police department.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "I remember."

"Yeah," said Aizawa, turning over a page. "That's L for you. She teases you and leads you on like she's getting some kind of perverse pleasure from it. But...you gotta be patient. You can't deal with her if you don't have patience."

Raito smiled knowingly. "But I'm just really curious, you know?" he rested the mug on the coffee table and leaned forward, thinking. "What did she write about me? And why doesn't she want to show it to me? I won't get mad."

"It's not about you getting mad, Raito," the older detective pointed out. "It's about Ryuuzaki's privacy. She doesn't like anyone to know what's going on in that mind of hers."

"Yeah, but the thing is – it's supposed to be some kind of...really romantic entry, you know?" The younger man felt a little embarrassed to say this. "And I didn't think she'd be the kind of person to write something like that."

"Hmm." Aizawa nodded understandingly. "Women do stuff like that. My own wife writes everything down in her diary – our good times and bad times," he went back to Raito's earlier question. Then he shuddered. "I think you should just be glad that she's not showing it to you. You might actually not like what you see."

"Has...your wife ever shown her diary to you?"

"Mm...not voluntarily," said Aizawa, sounding guilty. "I once found it by accident when I was looking for some papers and I swore I'd never open it again."

But this made Raito even more curious and he left Aizawa's office, his mind working on how to get L to show him her diary.

* * *

He got to take a brief interval from wondering about L's diary when a bubbly office girl "accidentally" spilled coffee on his pants. He went home, straight to the laundry room, glad for once that she hated doing housework.

* * *

He tried to forget about it. Tried to tell himself that it was no big deal. L was here, with him, eating his food, sleeping in his bed, so why should he care what she'd written about him in her journal? A part of him even told him that Aizawa was right and he didn't want to see what was written there. But Raito had always been a naturally curious person and that was why her words kept haunting him oftentimes.

_Dear Diary, today I met the man I am going to marry. He is a sociopathic serial killer, although handsome and charming, and I've decided that those qualities are enough in a husband._

Had she really written something like that?

"I've been thinking," said L one evening when he was leaning against the arm of the couch, allowing her to give him a footrub (no one would ever believe him that she did this on her own will, that she had a _thing_ for his feet). "The murders at Sycamore are too random. The victims have no relation to each other, nothing in common, and I think that Detective Cruise's theory that the killer is on a planned killing spree is absolute nonsense."

Raito listened to her half-heartedly, trying to feign interest that he would otherwise have given naturally had he not been brooding over case journals and sappy entries about matters of the heart. "Could be," he murmured.

"And the autopsy report doesn't even match the MO," she sounded distantly pissed. "It genuinely surprises me how people can come up with bizarre ideas and not have anything to back them up with."

"Yeah."

She looked at him, momentarily pausing her footrub. "Raito-kun?" She tilted her head, "You there?"

"Yeah," he said, as though waking from a reverie. "Where else would I be?"

Perplexed, "Raito-kun looks like he's thinking about something else. Is there something bothering him?" Her hands went back to massaging his feet, tips of her fingers pressing down on the veins, drawing circles on the surface of his skin and damn, it felt so good...

"It's nothing," he denied, shaking his head, thinking that if she kept this on, he might actually successfully forget about her case journal after all. "Just some...uh, office stuff."

"Such as?" the question was offered softly, as though she were trying to soothe him, very much like a wife easing the tension in her husband's shoulders after a hard day's work.

"Uh...nothing worth discussing," he answered, trying to avoid the topic. "Mostly Matsuda's idiocies."

"Hmm." She nodded understandingly. "Your perplexity wouldn't happen to have anything to do with my diary now, would it?"

He blinked at her. Why was he surprised? He knew that she was uncannily perceptive and they had always been able to read each other very well. "N-no, not at all." He shook his head. "What you write is your own business."

"Raito-kun doesn't mean that," she said flippantly. "He must be itching to know what I've written about him."

"I assure you that's not the case," he countered irritably. "Contrary to what you think, L, I have better things to do with my time than to brood over your secrets." Of course, this was not true. Raito would often spend his time wondering what L was hiding from him. Most of the times, it was candy, but there were occasional, more important things he suspected that she concealed. Needless to say, he was very eager to know of them but it wouldn't do to pressure her. He would have to draw her out step by step until she felt comfortable enough to talk about those things openly with him.

Or, he could just sneak behind her back and dig up those secrets himself. Whichever worked best.

* * *

On the fifth day of his obsession, when Raito had gone no less further than the spot where he already was, he found little pieces of papers stuck on the refrigerator door, with heart shapes drawn on them. In the center of these hearts was written _Mr & Mrs Raito Yagami_ in L's scrawly handwriting.

He clenched his jaw.

* * *

So this was it. The moment of truth.

Raito had spent six days wondering where L could've kept her case journal. He was already tired of finding those heart shapes in the most inconvenient places. Why, that morning, when he was at at work, taking out some case notes, those little pieces just fell out of his folder, onto the floor, bare for the whole world to see.

It hadn't helped that his father was there, looking most displeased, since he had always opposed their marriage. And Matsuda, that idiot, was grinning widely at those heart shapes, eyes twinkling like he and Raito shared a secret.

That couldn't have been farther from the truth.

The most important question, to come back to the main issue, was where did she hide it?

Certainly not behind the pillow, he considered with distaste. That was too clichéd and intuition told him that he would only find a stash of candy if he searched there.

Not under the bed, either, because then he'd probably discover a chocolate teddy bear, ears and nose missing.

_Then where?_

He searched the drawers. He searched the closet. He searched the cistern of the toilet, the medicine cabinet, and even the waste basket (he knew that she had the oddest quirks, which were simultaneously adorable and annoying).

And then, the proverbial light bulb lit over his head, telling him that he needed to look in the basement. He recalled one evening, when L had gone missing, he found her in the basement, and she looked deceptively innocent as soon as he found her.

He went to the basement. L was hunched over her laptop in the study, typing something furiously. He assumed that it was a long e-mail to Near or Watari since she hardly got to see them. And he would take advantage of her being busy.

He turned on the lights and started rummaging. There were a few tiny spiders amongst the folds of old clothes and some other junk, which he ignored. His mind was set solely on his prize.

And finally, he found it. A worn-out leather-bound Moleskin journal hidden under some old jeans that had belonged to L.

Raito's hands were trembling as he brought out the journal, wondering if this was right. A sudden wave of guilt washed over him as he realized what he was about to do. He was about to breach his wife's privacy by looking into her secret diary. If L found out...there was a ninety per cent chance that she would never forgive him.

Oh well, what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. And besides, he would only look for entries about _him_, not at her case studies.

Her handwriting had almost given him a headache when he turned the pages, looking at the various scribbles recording details of crime, and drawings of the weapons used to commit those crimes. On one page, his eyes narrowed when he saw that she'd written the few starting lines of a tanka.

So L was a closet poet, too. And he'd thought he was the philosophical one.

There was finally the date that he was looking for – October 24 2003. He wasn't sure but he had a feeling that this entry had been made after he discovered the death note – and before they'd met. It was in English, as expected. Thank God his own English was quite advanced, since his marriage to L and living with her in close quarters, knowing her well enough to pick up some of her skills. Curiously, he started to read it

_October 24 2003  
The plan for the television broadcast that I'd had has gone well – surprisingly well, I must say. As I suspected, Kira is in the Kanto region, and he gave himself away quite easily for a murderer of such high caliber and intelligence. All that I had to do was make the convict smirk at him and call him evil, and there! Kira's powers were demonstrated right before our eyes, to prove that it was real. He really can kill anyone without even being near them.  
What has amused me the most is that Kira resents being called evil. And taunted. I can imagine how livid he must have been when I challenged him to take my life, and he was unable to do so. It was a risk but I'm glad I took it, for I have learned some very useful things about him.  
I am now even more confident, after this little display, that I will be able to capture him and bring him to justice. I will hunt him down to the ends of the earth, if necessary, learn how he kills, and put an end to it. It is only a matter of time before Kira's reign is ended and he is exposed to be what he really is – a psychopathic serial killer with a megalomaniac complex. Not to mention a coward._

Raito was still for a long time after he finished reading the diary entry. It was as if his whole world had gone numb and he was unable to hear any other sound, like he'd been pulled under water abruptly. He stared at the words mutely, and he felt pain to see that this was what she used to think of him.

It shouldn't hurt this much. She had written this entry months before they'd met in person, a year before they'd fallen in love, but it was still agonizing to see that she had once seen him in such an unflattering light.

He flipped a few pages. Just useless details on how Kira killed, his psychology, and the list of victims found everyday. He was about to close the diary and leave it in its resting place when a voice from behind startled him.

"So Raito-kun has found it."

L was standing behind him. She didn't look angry, but she didn't look very pleased either.

He stared at her, a deer caught in the headlights. He thought of apologizing but the only thing that came to his mouth was, "I read the October entry."

"Ah," she said, as though that explained everything and then, she sighed. She came to stand beside him, looking over his shoulder. "Here," she reached over and turned the pages. "This is the one you're looking for."

He followed the direction of her finger and read what she pointed at.

_March 4th 2007  
I'm...not quite sure how to phrase this. I've thought long and hard about how to arrange my thoughts in a way that they make sense and that they don't come jumbled out the way the really are. I've been putting this off for weeks now, perhaps too embarrassed to admit it to myself because I never thought I'd be found in such a situation but...I've fallen in love.  
Kira..._Raito – _has...I don't even know how to say this. I haven't written much about what I've been up to for the last eight months. Maybe I didn't want to talk about it because it would be like admitting an undesirable truth about me. I'm deeply in love with Raito Yagami, the man who I've suspected of being Kira for so long.  
It's surprising, isn't it? All these years of loneliness, of fooling myself into believing that I was fine the way I was – an exceptionally successful detective, albeit a loner – has finally led me to find my match in who could be called the greatest serial killer of all times.  
Needless to say...I'm at odds with myself.  
But – it's not so bad. I've been miserable the last months and also ecstatic, swinging between these two polar directions like some sort of pendulum. But right now...I'm happy.  
I've never felt this way about anyone before. I mean...I thought I had been in love, when I was younger, but the feelings that arise in me when I'm with..._him _makes me think that everything I knew of romantic passion before was just an illusion. And now, I've 'hit the jackpot,' to use that crude expression. When he looks at me and smiles, I feel my heart soaring (oh, how I loathe to use such an expression!) and I try to put on this look of cold disinterest – a look that he can doubtlessly see past, because he often laughs this gentle manner when I'm being somewhat difficult, as if to say,_I'll take care of you. _I confess I haven't been objective with him. I know I should have. I know that I've broken a universal rule among all professionals that they should never get emotionally involved with their clients or prime suspect. I've broken many other rules for my own gain, but this is something that I never thought I would do. But I feel so free, so light-hearted, as though I have no cares in the world, letting the future take care of itself.  
I've become a girl again.  
At least, that's the way I feel when I'm around this amazing man, who'll never tire me. I can talk to him for hours, engage in intellectual sparring, tell silly jokes, and still crave his company longer. I'm afraid where this might lead. I'm afraid that I'll lose all sense of direction and become so hopelessly enamored of him, like all those other girls who had feelings for him. I know this is pathetic but one can't help the way one feels.  
And the most disturbing thing is...he feels the same way about me._

Another minute of silent pondering.

"And then, there's this," said L, turning over another page. Raito read on.

_June 3 2008  
Another lapse. Whereas my last entry was angst-ridden (much like a teenage girl moaning over her first crush), I bring some good news now (and still not so different from a teenage girl).  
Things have worked out surprisingly well with Raito-kun. I'm not at liberty to speak of how in detail, for obvious reasons but I will say this much –_ the spell has been lifted.  
_I'm gushing like a lovestruck fool but I've never been so happy! Certainly there are problems that we face in our everyday lives as we try to work on our relationship, but one constant is our mutual devotion. He tries to spend as much as time with me as possible and I gladly reciprocate. I've never been in a relationship before so this is quite new to me. I'm not used to making sacrifices or compromises and nor he is, but we're both learning together. I look forward to him coming to see me every other day with his college assignments. I almost feel like a lascivious older woman taking advantage of an innocent boy!  
And last night...last night...he finally popped the question.  
He took me aback. He could always do that so effortlessly, but this one takes the cake (no pun intended). "There's no rush," he was saying like the gentleman he is at heart. "I don't want to pressure you into doing something you aren't ready for."  
I gaped at him for good measure. I'd never expected to go that way, and so soon!  
"I need some time to think about it," I told him. He nodded understandingly, trying to hide his anxiety that I might back off and say no.  
But now that I've thought it over – I couldn't be any happier.  
I know it won't be easy, given our issues and our past but I believe that this isn't a bad thing to do. There's no question of rush -who else could either of us be with? We've known each other for almost two years now, aware of each other's darkest secrets and while I never thought I would settle down, I can safely say that if I were ever to marry, Raito Yagami would be the best choice.  
And so I've decided to say yes. We both want this; no matter how long we put it off, this is our ultimate goal, so why do tomorrow what we are sure we want to do today?  
I think I will like being his wife. I think I will like it very much._

* * *

Slowly, Raito turned his head to fix his eyes on L to find that she was already gazing at him, black orbs softly illuminated. "L..."

Her words still rang in his mind like beautiful music, dimmed out as her lips met his.

He put the diary away, encircling his arm around her slim waist, feeling her slender fingers run through his hair, their bodies pressed together in a embrace.

He drew back to press a small kiss on her forehead and smiled down at her.

"Is Raito-kun curiosity satisfied now?" she asked as she looked into his eyes.

"Yeah," he nodded, and laughed. She took his hand and led him upstairs. "I'm sorry I looked into your diary, though."

"Hmm," she acquiesced. "Raito-kun can make it up to me quite easily," she said as she closed the bedroom door behind them.

A/N: Okay, this one is finally up :D. I think I messed up the dates, and the ending was too mushy, but do let me know what you think!


End file.
